Parts of the skin and mucous membranes have long been treated antiseptically prior to surgical intervention, injections or punctures and prior to examinations of body cavities accessible from the outside. Moreover, it is necessary also for those persons who carry out the above treatments and examinations to disinfect their hands before the treatment or examination commences.
For such purposes known compositions with antiseptic action are highly volatile alcohols. However, high alcohol concentrations must be present for effectiveness within a very short contact time (within seconds to a few minutes). The alcohol content is generally more than 50, mostly about 60 to 80% by wt. The alcohols are frequently aliphatic alcohols such as ethanol, 1-propanol and 2-propanol.
In addition to alcohols, hand disinfectants frequently contain other substances such as long-acting active cationic compounds with an antimicrobial action, and skin care components in order to prevent severe drying of the skin. In the case of skin antiseptics containing lipid restorers, the alcohol content must often be higher than in preparations without lipid restoring agents, since said compounds often impair the antiseptic effectiveness of the alcohols or other microbial active ingredients present.
In spite of the lipid restoring skin care components, and given the necessarily frequent use of said preparations, irritation of the skin treated therewith occurs to an increased extent at colder times of the year.
Apart from alcoholic skin antiseptics and hand disinfectants, antimicrobial and disinfectant aqueous emulsions are also known which contain a glycerol monoalkyl ether., e.g. 3-alkoxypropan-1,2-diol (known for example from U.S. Pat. No. DE 649 206). The antimicrobial effectiveness of glycerol ethers (e.g. also known from JP 76-76424) when used alone has proved to be relatively poor in practice, however, so that their use as an active ingredient in skin antiseptics containing substantial quantities of water is completely inadequate without other additives also having an antimicrobial action.
It is an object of the invention to provide a particularly skin-compatible skin antiseptic and hand disinfectant that 1) has a lasting lipid-restoring effect and hence cares for the skin; 2) and yet is a quick-acting antiseptic which capacity and ease of application is not impaired by skin care components and 3) gives a pleasant feel to the skin.